Batman Halloween
by Thor2000
Summary: In keeping with the continuity with my previous TV series Batman storylines, the caped crusader and his trusty sidekick deal with a new villain to Gotham and are joined by a new hero to defeat him. This is the last of my Batman stories in this continuity.
1. Chapter 1

Everyone who was anybody stopped, mulled and ambled forward into the restored Gotham City County Museum. Guests still arrived by limousine and caterers distributed champagne as police officers hob-knobbed with the town's social elite. A few guests even arrived from out of town to partake on the renewed and restored museum. Reporters clambered for quotes and flashing lights bobbed over the heads of eager Gotham City citizens trying to get a scant look as the prestige guests who arrived. A few ladies screamed in delight as they recognized wealthy Tony Stark in his tux and realized his rugged Tom Selleck looks. A few even bemoaned as he reached to his lovely female escort. Raven-haired Pepper Potts regally waved to the crowd as if she were a princess or a movie star. From the sidelines, Peter Parker struggled for a decent shot even if he had to elbow Jimmy Olsen out of his line of shot.

"This isn't Spiderman, Parker." Olsen poked fun at him. "This is the big league."

"Just remember to take off the lens cap…" Parker remarked and quickly reacted to keep Olsen from falling on his own feet from the museum steps. Parker was fast to catch him that quickly as if he had a premonition of a fatal tumble. In this gathering, one could get stomped into the sidewalk. Peter turned his brown eyes to the next limo as Police Chief Seamus O'Hara took the luxury to open this one. Reporters now screamed louder to get Bruce Wayne's attention. Had he had Barbara Gordon set a date for their wedding? Were they interested in children? Everyone wanted to know. Mrs. Gordon appeared bosomy in her long dark dress and very regal in the sparkling photographer bulbs lighting up her azure eyes. Behind her, Dick Grayson appeared from the limousine in a tuxedo in his size. On his arm, Donna Troy waved as well to the cheering crowds looking for a face. Standing by the Avenger Thor Odinson, Government agent Diana Prince revealed her presence and nodded her approval to the two. A secret look between Troy and Grayson realized the bonds they shared. A brief few seconds for pictures, Bruce pressed on someone pushed through the crowd. He looked up from the microphone in his face to the face of Lois Lane trying to get a response from him.

"Mr. Wayne," She fought to stay standing. "You are among seven other investors responsible for the new security systems on the museum, what sort of new exhibits does the museum have that require that much security?"

"As you may already know," Wayne held Barbara Gordon on his arm as he continued. "The museum has successfully purchased from the Nashville Metropolitan Museum in Tennessee the rights to exhibit its History of Witchcraft artifacts along with our own limited witchcraft exhibits."

"Not many people know it," Barbara spoke up. "But in the Seventeenth Century, we had a few witchcraft trials on this very site as well, and a few artifacts from the time too, but not enough to warrant a full exhibit. We are all very pleased with what we have been donated from abroad to properly warrant this new wing."

"One of the artifacts is the mummified remains of an obscure Wiccan practitioner." Lane remarked. "Very appropriate for October and Halloween."

"I truly doubt we are at risk of her returning to life." Bruce grinned his steely grin and pressed on behind Dick and Donna. At the top of the stairs, he had a brief chance to acknowledge Stark and his date. With him, Radley Crown had arrived from Boston as well to share in the spectacle. He and Bruce shared a secret look over their glasses of champagne as the crowd of wealthy and elite waited for their host. Before any regular patrons or reporters would be shown through, the investors would be allowed a first glimpse at their financial labors. Grousing over his tuxedo, curator James Michael Hackett tugged at his collar and hesitated insecurely from starting the tour.

"Ladies and gentlemen," He had to speak up to be heard over the roar of guests outside wanting to come in and seen the refurbished museum. "Welcome to the new Gotham Museum. If I appear a bit incoherent, please forgive me. I've never done this outside Nashville in a building of this size. This way please…"

Dick turned up from looking at Donna's dress and noticed someone who didn't seem to belong. Off to the side, a figure in a long coat and heavy cap was watching from the shadows. He couldn't see any features, but the figure seemed too thin to be human. Its overcoat clung to the shadowy stranger as if it were draped over a thin skeleton.

Hackett used an electronic key designed by Crown's Security Company to unlock the gates to the museum and enter from the foyer to the main hall. A mild applause resulted to see that it actually worked. Dick looked up again to the strange figure and realized it was missing.

"Dick?" Donna tugged at him.

"I'm coming…" He felt himself pulled along after her.

"Welcome to Sixteenth Century Gotham…" Hackett stood in a room surrounded by old colonial artifacts existing back to when the city was a mere trading post and a few cabins on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River. His discussion of the artifacts continued on as Security Guard Walter Finch winced from the talk. This place was spooky enough as it is without a discussion of witchcraft and the Salem trials. Even with Halloween coming, Finch knew this place was growing much more ominous.

"Over here," Hackett turned the investors and museum curators to a shriveled barely human figure in a sealed glass case. "…Are the remains of Constance Barnes. Exiled from Blair, Maryland, she ended up living on the Gotham River in 1658 selling potions and charms for three years before a band of thieves killed her for her money and dumped her remains in the bog. The bog kept her preserved for three hundred years until she was discovered during the construction of the local highway."

That did it. Finch knew working with that preserved dead body in this building was going to prey on his fears and imagination. Reminding himself that he was a World War Two veteran and a former Gotham City Police Officer, he just rubbed his head and tried to bear it. His partner came to give him a break and Finch headed down the block for his dinner at the diner. When he returned for the second part of his shift, the tours were over, the people were gone and the ghosts of the museum started coming out. Exhibits grew frightening as Finch and his partner was locked into the building to patrol the place until one in the morning. Not really interested, Finch forced his way back to the witchcraft exhibit and then stopped where he was.

Where did the skeleton come from?

Propped up on a display outside the exhibit, Finch started wondering if someone had snuck in an extra exhibit on him. They looked like real bones, but there was no plaque saying who they used to be. The body of bones even seemed to be looking at him as he ran his eyes over ever crack and ligature on it. To his eyes, it appeared to be a genuine human skeleton, but it didn't have any supports or rods holding it up. It just seemed to be standing on the pedestal without anything keeping it together; yet, somehow, it was all in one piece.

"Where did you come from, skinny?" Finch leaned in curiously as a breeze swayed one of its arms and then its hand grabbed him by the neck. Its head leaned in to him cracking and clicking as its dried backbone grinded against each other.

"Hasn't anyone taught you to be respectful to your elders?" A dried hollow voice emerged up out of its ribcage. Finch could only gasp for air. It wasn't possible! It just wasn't possible!! It was alive and it talked with a voice that could only come from the grave! Instead of reaching for his gun, Finch could only clutch at his heart. It felt it was about to come through his chest. One last wheezing gasp came from his throat as he fell limp to the floor.

"Cretin." The skull dropped off the display and walked across the cold parquet floor to the witchcraft exhibit and in particular the dried earthly remains of Constance Barnes. Its fleshless feet scraped and scratched the floor until it stopped and looked up to her. Before her, its head seemed to admire her browned mummified remains twisted and contorted out of shape by the earth that had preserved it.

"I've found your body, Connie." An unearthly wheezing vibrated the jaw of the skeleton. "Now, to find you a soul to restore you to life…" It began chuckling.


	2. Chapter 2

A jet engine pushed forward the Batmobile at eighty miles an hour and computer locked brakes stopped the indestructible vehicle several feet from striking a police car parked in front of the museum. The caped crusader known as the Batman and his partner Robin the Boy Wonder rushed up the front steps of the museum surrounded by the early misty dew of the early morning. Robin respectfully screeched to a stop as the body of security guard Walter Finch was being carried out in a body bag. No amount of CPR was going to wake him out of his deathly sleep. Fellow security guard Dennis Brackett was giving his testimony to Police Chief Seamus O'Hara, but mostly the seasoned veteran could do was calm him down. Brackett and Finch had been long time friends. The old man had given him his job in the museum and Brackett was heart-crushed. Finch had been like a father to him. He had married his daughter. The two drank beers together and now he was gone. Batman tried to remain indifferent to the emotion before turning to Commissioner Jim Gordon. Still partially asleep, Gordon pulled his overcoat shut over the shirt of his pajamas.

"Sorry for getting you out this early, Batman," Gordon turned to the witchcraft exhibit. "But I've got some bad news. Someone broke into the exhibit and stole half a dozen pieces including the ancient remains of Constance Barnes. I'm just sick and disgusted over this entire thing. We just opened last night."

"Holy bad taste!" Robin pounded his gloved fist into his hand. "Is anything else missing?"

"Nothing so far, boy wonder." Gordon turned to bare walls and shattered cases. "With all the objects and art of value in the building, I don't understand why they would take just these things. They're of no value to anyone else but to another historian."

"That's your clue, Commissioner." Batman reacted solemnly and dramatically under his cowl. "Only to another historian. They could only have been taken by a private collector."

"Like..." Gordon thought of local men with interests in history. "Bruce Wayne, perhaps."

"Bruce Wayne?" Police Chief O'Hara walked over with an overcoat under his arm. "Faith and begorra, he's the chairman of the board of museum trustees."

"Bruce Wayne is too obvious a choice." Batman's mind was working. "No, I'm thinking of perhaps a figure much more desperate and much more cunning. I know Wayne far to well. He does not have the…" There was a bit of a wry twist to his mouth as he found himself saying this. "Psychological merit to pull a theft like this."

"How did the security guard die, commissioner?" Robin inquired.

"Heart attack." Gordon revealed. "His heart just stopped. Paramedics said it was as if he just saw something he couldn't handle."

"Did the security cameras see anything?" Batman asked.

"That's just it, caped crusader." O'Hara looked to the man in the mask. "They suspiciously cut out just before midnight for exactly thirty-seven minutes. Whoever it was must have used some device to remotely erase all the tapes." He recalled the overcoat. "But we do have this. We found this hat and coat stuffed behind a potted plant. It might have been left behind by our assailant."

"It might be our only clue." Batman took the coat. "If there's any forensic residue left behind on it, our Bat-spectrograph should be able to read it. Plus, I would like access to all the videotapes of last night. There should be some way to read the damaged portions of the tapes."


	3. Chapter 3

Orchestra had been in top shape tonight, but Barbara Gordon had noticed that Bruce was not truly interested. His true personality was being the Batman and Bruce Wayne was merely a public facade. She had made an effort to change that, but instead she realized that she was going to end up married to the Batman. Bruce's mind stayed on the museum robbery as she pulled his arm over her shoulders.

"Penny for your thoughts?" She asked as her brilliant blue eyes lit up by the passing streetlights.

"Save your penny for a rainy day." Bruce grinned to her. "I've been thinking about the robbery at the museum. Even with the new security system, it could only have been an inside job, but how someone got in and stayed around without being noticed is impossible."

"Maybe they hid in plain sight as one of the exhibits." Barbara proved she had a quite a gifted mind herself. "Were there any missing or extra statues or figures?"

"No," Bruce continued driving her home. "Dick and I checked."

"How about the overcoat?" Barbara wondered out loud as they passed the courthouse.

"The only thing we found on it were spores from spirocryptus porifera, a mold that grows in tombs, mausoleums and exhumed graves, but there hasn't been any graves exhumed around here in ten years." Bruce stopped at the light on the corner of the old deserted monastery. "The spores generally develop near decaying organic matter and seldom survive in sunlight for more than a day."

"The thief could be hiding out in a deserted tomb." Barbara replied as a few pedestrians crossed in front of them.

"Or the old morgue…" Bruce replied. "But we checked all those out including a few taxidermy shops. No, I think we're overlooking something." The light changed as the last pedestrian hastened on to the sidewalk and continued on his way. Clad in a dark suit, he recognized the famous couple and continued past the deserted monastery several feet and then descended stairs into the alleyway running behind it. Trash strewn spaces greeted him as cats ran amuck through the filth and forgotten waste containers. Obviously knowing where he was going, the feral felines hastened from him as his path took him into the basement of the former sect and then deep into catacombs that smelled of the sewers leaking into them. Several other human followers mulled around here tapping into dark forces in which they had no business. An example of their dark foolishness sat in the form of a decrepit skeleton propped in a chair.

"Lord Skull…" The dark disciple beckoned his master. "These are the family records of Constance Barnes; I'm afraid to report she has no living relatives."

The skeleton turned his head to the witch's mummified body on an altar near him.

"None?"

"None, sir." His weak-minded follower confirmed. The Skull looked back to the body again.

"Connie, this may take longer than we thought." A hollow voice issued from its jaw.

"On the other hand, sir," His loyal lackey regretted to this day the spells, which he had dabbled in that had brought this living skeleton to earth. "While I was doing my research, I came across a Nicholas Barnes who was already living here when Constance came here from Blair. I'm not sure, but they might have been related. Barnes had one child, a daughter."

"Was he your brother, Connie?" The Skull looked to her body. "Who was the daughter?" He looked back to his follower.

"Innocent Barnes, wife of Isaac Gordon, an ancestor of Police Commissioner James Gordon." His trembling dark follower answered. He jumped back in fear as his lord stood up like a creature from a Ray Harryhausen movie. A low chuckling issued from his skeletal throat.

"Commissioner Gordon…" The Skull treaded down from his seat on two thin spindly legs. Non-existent lungs expanded its ribcage as it hissed out a loud breath. "His lovely daughter would make a perfect body for a former dark sorceress. We must invite her to the party!!" He began laughing his hideous laughter.


	4. Chapter 4

No one knew who Batman was, but then very few cared to know. Gotham City was glad to have him and appreciative for the extreme effort he made for the city. Anyone who had paid attention knew he worked out of a place called the Bat-Cave where supposedly he could find any secret that any criminal had. Commissioner Gordon had seen it once without knowing where it was and even he testified it was the most futuristic underground base he had ever seen. From this brilliant secret location, the dynamic duel had foiled the plans of many criminal pursuits and backed the police in numerous investigations. Clad in his identity as the Boy Wonder, Dick Grayson sat watching the police security tape over for what seemed like the hundredth time. He was starting to have it memorized. He couldn't eliminate the static during the robber, but he could jump over it. Once again, Walter Finch walked the hall of the museum and then walked up to the skeleton on display. The static came on, and the scene jumped ahead to Finch lying on the floor dead. Robin's head jumped alert to realize the skeleton was missing after the static.

"Holy missing persons!!" He cried out. "Batman, I got something!!"

"What is it, old chum?" Bruce stood behind him sans the cape and cowl of his costume.

"We were so busy looking for new figures in the exhibits we never thought to look for entire new exhibits!" Robin flashed two scenes back and forth from before and after the guard died. "There's a skeleton next to the hall here that's missing after the guard died." Robin revealed as Bruce grabbed the textbook on the museum sculptures. "What do you think happened to it?"

"According to this," Bruce read the list of artifacts. "That podium is reserved for a Ming vase from the Chang Dynasty. It wasn't stolen either, it was found abandoned in a restroom."

"What do you suppose it means?" Robin tried using his deductive skills. "Could it have been an animatronic remote-controlled skeleton that let the thieves inside?"

"Just as I'm thinking," Bruce narrowed his eyes as he thought. "The mold would seem to indicate a foe we've never dealt with before, possibly someone with a panache for the occult and death."

"The Goblin?"

"Last I checked," Bruce stared determinedly upon the video screen. "The Goblin was still incarcerated at Arkham. Besides, this is not his style; his ego would not allow him to pull this crime without boasting about it."

"Well," Robin stood perplexed. He longed for the days their regular villains repeated their mistakes. In the last few years, it seemed they had new miscreants coming from Manhattan across the bay and up from Metropolis. "If it's not the Goblin, who could it be?"

"Someone we have yet to encounter…" Bruce reached for his cape and cowl as the phone line to Wayne Manor high above them rang in the cave. Dropping the accessories to his costume, he grabbed the receiver and took a deep breath for the sake of the repressed Bruce Wayne persona he had to live behind. "Wayne Manor, this is Bruce Wayne speaking."

"Bruce," Commissioner Gordon sat at his desk at the Gotham City Police Station. "This is your future father-in-law. Is Barbara there?"

"No, she isn't." Wayne looked to his young ward listening to his side of the conversation. "I wasn't going to see her until tonight."

"Oh," Gordon sounded worried. "Well, we were supposed to get together for lunch and she never showed. I went by her apartment to check on her, but she wasn't there. I'm starting to get a bit worried."

"I'm sure she's alright." Bruce tried to dissuade his feelings. "Barbara can take care of herself. Have you tried calling Batman about this?"

"Not yet," Gordon looked to the red phone in the room. "I'm sure he's so busy investigating the robbery at the museum, I didn't want to bother him. I mean there are things my men can cover as well."

"Certainly," Bruce replied with a heartfelt concern. "If I find Barbara anywhere, I will have her get in touch with you. Now if you'll excuse me, I was just about to head out myself."

"Of course," Gordon signed off. "I'm sure it's nothing. Barbara has always had some secret life she's never told me about."

"Exactly." Bruce signed off and hung up the phone. Rushing over to the Bat-Radar detector, he switched the screen on and then typed in a frequency he wanted to locate.

"Bruce?" Dick wanted in on the mystery.

"Barbara is missing." Bruce started tracing radio signals. "It would be just like her as Batgirl to investigate a hunch and get in trouble. Fortunately, the watch I gave her has a transmitter as well as a homing beacon I can home in on even when it's not activated."

"That's the old monastery!" Dick screamed out loud as the detector locked in on her watch in the city. "And there just so happens that there are old catacombs underneath where bodies were once kept!"

Bruce glanced up at the overcoat with the old mold on it.

"Quick to the Batmobile!!" Bruce grabbed and pulled on his cape and cowl as he rushed to the bulletproof super-car. Dick jumped in behind him pulling his mask on as the cave smelled with the exhaust of jet fuel and the tires squealed on the hard floor to push the vehicle out the tunnel to the outside.


	5. Chapter 5

Her senses tried to tell her she was dreaming. Around her were numerous cloaked figures in a wide chamber lit by torches. Barbara's head tilted and her eyelids drooped as she looked around her and tried to read where she was. She felt her back against a cold stone surface and her fingers brushed against ropes tying her hands above her head. Pulling against them, she realized they weren't going to give. Her legs bound together seemed to be tied down to something as well. Her eyes drifted up from looking down her chest to her feet and then up to these dark figures keeping her bound.

"Who are you people?" Her speech slurred. "What do you want with me?"

"Let's just say we're performing a psychic transplant." A hideous hollow voice came from under a hood. "Your soul for hers." Barbara looked over to another body on another stone slab behind the figures around her captors. It was gnarled, ruined and twisted exactly like the mummified figure from the museum. In fact, she was sure it was the same figure! She looked up a bit more clearly as whatever drugs in her started dissipating. The figure standing at her feet didn't have a face, just the bare decrepit features of a skull. A scream started building up in her lungs as her eyes widened in terror.

"That's right…" The Skull was used to these reactions from people who saw him. "Just let it all out. I'm just a skeleton animated by an evil spirit. I get it all the time." He raised an antique brooch that once belonged to Constance Barnes. "Give me a minute and you'll feel a lot better."

"No!!" Barbara started screaming and fighting against her restraints as these cultists forced her down. "Don't touch me! Don't touch me!! Why are you doing this to me?! Somebody help me!!"

"Domnus mis las occultus empusa…" The figures started chanting in Latin. The Skull pressed the brooch to her chest. "Es ta les strigoi lamia enna occulta occultus mes solis…" There was a crash in the room as occult master and disciple looked up. At the top of the stairs up to the basement of the mausoleum, the dark-knight detective and the boy wonder stood looking down upon their dark ceremony being attempted.

"Unhand that woman and turn yourselves in!!" Batman called to them.

"I can't work like this." The Skull shook his head. "Get them out of here." He started his mystic ritual over again as his followers turned to fight for him. Batman's eyes widened to see a sea of cloaked and hooded figures charging him and Robin. Diving the ten feet down into the catacombs, he registered the first blow and Robin smacked the first one to try striking him. Those cloaks and robes restricted their combatants from fighting expertly and they proved to be perfect accessories to use to his advantage. He could strike them before they saw him and those ridiculous long robes kept them from copying his box kicking techniques. Ducking another blow as one of the cultists smashed his hand on a vault, Batman punched and tossed away another attacker. The twenty attackers had been wheedled down to nine and then eight as Robin trapped one in a tomb. Barbara's screams resonated off the stone and brick surroundings as she saw an energy force coming up out of the body of Constance Barnes near her. Slowly rising it, it began arching and turning toward her as a cloaked figure sailed through it, over her body and past the Skull. The living corpse cocked his head up as Batman started to get a clear path to throw his batarang. One of his loyal followers grabbed his arm to keep him from throwing his weapon, but then Robin pummeled that miscreant. Rearing his arm back, Batman threw his batarang and it cleaved straight for the dark foe. The Skull moved aside of it as it bounced off the wall behind him and struck him in the back. Its momentum knocked him over Barbara, and he crashed into the floor into a mess of bones covered in a robe but only temporarily. Batman watched in shock as it sprang back up as a creation of Ray Harryhausen brought to life. It's head looked around to see Batman and Robin standing alone among his trounced disciples.

"Incompetents…" It muttered. "I'm surrounded by incompetents."

"What sort of creature are you!" Robin watched as the thing stood between them and the female energy being extending out from the remains of Constance Barnes toward Barbara. Barbara continued screaming and fighting to free herself as this specter reached to her.

"Caped crusader," The Skull tilted his bony head sideways. "You've always appreciated the dark. What if I help bring you over?"

"I don't know who or what you are, but I'm not entering any dark pacts with anyone!" Batman stood trying to understand what was happening. How could he stop something he couldn't comprehend?!

"That wasn't a choice." The Skull swung his arm over his head. Batman started to lung at his dark enemy as an arm formed out of the air. Robin felt something he didn't see grab him as well. He started seeing bright gray shapes forming from the air with black eyes and ghoulish faces. These things looked exactly like what he expected ghosts to look like. They were clutching and grabbing at him and Batman. The dynamic duo found itself being lifted off their feet and unable to move as their supernatural enemy commanded and controlled the sprit world itself. Hollow hideous laughter echoed around them as the bright life force of Constance Barnes found Barbara to be a quite suitable host. The Skull stared deep into her eyes as she felt her ancestor pouring through her body and starting to make room within her. Her body shook and started going into fits as her own soul tried fighting against it. Her mind suddenly had images of being drowned by the ancestors of the Joker, the Riddler and the Penguin. It was the last tings her ancestor had seen before dying. The memories of Constance Barnes started filling her brain. Above her, Batman tried to fight things he couldn't see.

"Batman!" James Michael Hackett appeared in the mausoleum dressed in the Confederate soldier uniform of his ancestor. Punching out of his way one of the cultists, he reached to his side and lifted an antique rusted railroad lantern that began glowing in the presence of the ghosts. In its presence, banshees and poltergeists had to clutch and grab at the caped crusaders to keep from being sucked into it. His lantern began shaking by the sheer number of them, but he also found it hard to keep it aloft as the cultists attacked him. Barbara Gordon began screaming as she started losing her memories. Batman fell to the floor ahead of Robin.

"The cultists are human!" Hackett screamed. "Get them first!!"

"But Barbara…" Batman watched as Hackett tried to keep his lantern alight. The spirit of Constance Barnes was being tugged from her descendant. The Skull was rechanting the same occult phrase over and over.

"Occultus occulto los muertos… occultus occulto los muertos…"

Barbara's seizures were getting worse. She felt she was being ripped apart as her ancestor tried to bond into her. Batman and Robin started fighting the Skull's human agents again as Hackett continued coming closer with the glowing lantern. The Skull stopped chanting to look up hatefully to him. His bony features seemed to scowl hatefully.

"I'm really starting to hate you!"

"I'm not happy to see you again either." Hackett felt a violent jolt to his lantern as Constance Barnes returned to the other side. Rearing his enchanted lantern up, he tossed it hard against his old foe as its energy absorbed him as well. Its mystic properties would keep the Skull from reforming, but not from being released by another dark mystic in another body. Barbara started regaining her breath as Hackett reached to untie her ropes.

"Mr. Hackett," Batman looked up as he and Robin stuffed the last of the human cultists in one large tomb. "Thank you for your help, but what are you…"

"In Nashville, Batman… " Hackett confessed as Barbara grabbed the dark-knight detective and clung to him crying. "I'm called the Confederate. I use the lantern to keep the balance between the living and the dead."

"You knew that thing?" Robin breathed heavily after this difficult case.

"Two thousand years ago, he was a powerful warlock…" Hackett spoke as his costumed alter ego now that events came to a close. "He considers himself the anti-Charon. He often takes it upon himself to help trapped souls escape back to the world of the living."

"Like my ancestor…" Barbara clutched her chest trying to get her heart to slow down.

"She was a very powerful witch." Hackett looked toward the skeletal remains his foe once possessed. "And she had promised him powers if he helped her to cross back over."


	6. Chapter 6

If the story had come from anyone else, Commissioner James Gordon would not have believed it, but coming from Batman, he had to believe it. The twenty cultists in his jail had rap sheets for grave robbery, vandalism and animal abuse going back five years, but now he had them for assault and kidnapping his beloved daughter. Barbara had a reason to grin as well. On Bruce's arm at the steps of the courthouse, she beamed happily to be alive and very interested in a future as the future Mrs. Bruce Wayne.

"Bruce," Gordon walked next to James Michael Hackett fresh from reclaiming the recovered stolen museum artifacts. "You know, you owe quite a debt to Batman." They approached Wayne's limo. "He saved Barbara's life."

"I'd like to thank both him and the Confederate." Wayne and Barbara shared a secret look as Hackett listened. "He could not have done it alone."

"Oh, yes, that other hero…" Gordon couldn't believe how ignorant he was being. "I wish I had got a chance to meet him. We don't get very many other superheroes here in Gotham."

"From what I understand," Hackett spoke up. "Nashville is one of the top ten most haunted cities in the United States. He's probably very busy. You're lucky enough he was able to follow the Skull up here."

"Yes, yes, indeed," Gordon looked into Barbara's contented face. "Thank god we have men like Batman and the Confederate on our side to protect us."

"Yes," Barbara pulled Hackett and Wayne to her. "Thank god…"

On the other side of town, Arkham Asylum rested on a hill north of Gotham. It had a hundred rooms and fifty equipped just for its specialized psychotic prisoners. Into the cemetery on the hospital grounds, a blonde female sexpot in sunglasses and a long overcoat against the cold weather started looking for a new grave. The Goblin's fiendish laughter resonated from the asylum along with that of the Riddler. Cats from the Catwoman's cell infested the grounds catching and killing birds from the Penguin's attic aviary. Poison Ivy looked down from her cell on the vine-covered side of the hospital as the captivating blonde below her located and dropped to a recent grave. The tombstone read "Jack Napier 1938-1992." The epitaph below that read, "A Joker to the end…"

"Hello there, Mr. J." The voice of Harley Quinn spoke as she knelt to the grave. She had been in love with the man in the buried coffin back when he was the Joker despite his treatment of her in the past. "Happy birthday!!" She blew a party favor toward the tombstone.

"I bet you're not happy in there." She continued. "The Goblin was supposed to be your friend, and now he's running around telling people he's you. You can't be happy about that, but I think I got a way to help you get him." She pulled a dried skull she had stolen from the police evidence locker to place on the grave. Hidden under her coat, she pressed it into the bare soil on the Joker's grave and turned it to face her.

"There you go, Mr. Skull." She dusted it off a bit. "Do your thing." She sat and looked at it. Waiting several minutes, she waited for her beloved Joker to come ripping out of the ground or at least his sprit coming up to meet her. Nothing was happening. A breeze whipped her long blonde hair into her eyes as the Riddler's squeals emerged from Arkham.

"Come on, do something!" She waited a few more minutes. "Crap, I guess I got to put you together before I can put Mr. J. together." She paused a second and lifted the skull up to her face. "Wait'll they get a load of us!!" She grinned to it.

END


End file.
